FCC offers $81 mn in funding for digital services for students

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced it is committing over $81 million in a new funding round through the Emergency Connectivity Program, which provides digital services for students in communities.
Today’s funding commitments support applications from our third application window, benefiting approximately 170,000 students across the country, including students in Alaska, Iowa, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Washington, and the District of Columbia.

“With students heading back to classrooms this fall, we need to make sure all our kids can connect with teachers and homework assignments when school ends for the day,” said Chairwoman Rosenworcel.  “This latest round of funding will help make that happen, and bring us closer to closing the Homework Gap.”

To date, the Commission has committed nearly $5.8 billion to schools and libraries across the country as part of the Emergency Connectivity Program, which launched last year.  The program has provided schools and libraries three different “application windows” for schools and libraries to apply for support. Today’s announcement includes over $81 million from the third application window that will support over 300 schools, 25 libraries, and 2 consortia.

To date, the program has provided support to approximately 10,000 schools, 900 libraries, and 100 consortia, and providing nearly 12 million connected devices and over 7 million broadband connections.  Of the nearly $5.8 billion in funding commitments approved to date, approximately $4.1 billion is supporting applications from Window 1; $800 million from Window 2; and $893 million from Window 3.